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We walked onto the yacht that smelled of raw fish and saltwater. I heard my mother scream, her voice not far behind me.
“No!” she yelled. “We had a deal, you idiot. Put me down! Do you have any idea who I am?”
A man laughed. “You served your purpose, bitch.”
The man holding me turned to the left, away from my mother’s screams, and led me down a long hallway. Whoever owned the yacht clearly had money. They decorated the walls in expensive paintings, and as we passed the saloon, I spotted an original Evangeline Franco painting hung on the wall above a mantle.
My captor stopped in front of a door at the end of the corridor. He stepped into the room and lowered me onto a mattress on the floor. My shoulder broke the fall, and a searing pain shot down my arm. Every bone in my body hurt from the drugs and lack of sleep. A red-hot blaze licked my skin, creating a dangerous fire I couldn’t contain.
A man slept on the mattress beside me with his head turned to the side. I scooted closer to get a better look at his blond curly hair and gasped.
“Aiden!” I shook his shoulder. “Aiden, wake up!”
Is he dead?
“Shut up!” The Italian man hunched down so I could feel his breath on my cheek. “It’s time to take your medicine.”
He jammed a needle into my neck.
Once again, I felt myself detaching from reality, slowly losing consciousness.
And then, nothing.
The vein in my neck throbbed with each breath I took. Seconds from losing my fucking mind, I walked over to Carl Wellington, repeating the words from the note in my head.
We captured your Queen.
Took your Knight.
Make your move.
Lorenzo Basile thought he was clever. But a knight in chess could jump over any piece, regardless of color, and capture their enemy, wiping them from the board.
Aiden was too useful to them.
They wouldn’t kill him, though they probably would torture him until he wished he were dead. Now it all made sense why the Basiles forced my father to work with them. They were playing the long game. Fifteen years to plan their revenge for a crime Alex and Aiden didn’t commit.
My great uncle didn’t need the money. The Basiles had controlled Southern Italy for the past fifty years and had amassed enough wealth and power to topple a small country.
A part of me wanted to rub the situation in Carl’s smug fucking face. He refused to offer the Knights more help when we begged him for it. Thought he was teaching me a lesson for not following his orders. For fighting him every step of the way.
This was on him.
We took Aiden under our wings, brought him into The Devil’s Knights, and trained him to become one of us. He was only a few months into his initiation. I still couldn’t wrap my head around how the Sicilians had gotten to Aiden without the Knights knowing about it.
For the past month, he’d been living in a secure location off the grid. Only the higher ranking Knights knew about the safe house.
So how did they find him?
They had outsmarted us at every turn. Blocked each of our attempts to get out from under this situation. I wondered if they were working with the Russians, even though they had been enemies for years. But now they had a common enemy.
“The Basiles have taken Alex and Aiden,” I told Carl.
His head snapped to me, his nostrils flared. “Are you certain?”
I nodded, then repeated the exact words of the note our men had found in the empty shipping container. We thought it was strange the Basiles container was the only one missing from the carrier. And for it to disappear mid-transit was even more bizarre.
“I contacted Aiden’s Pledge Master. Missing video surveillance confirms they kidnapped him from the safe house around the same time Savanna took Alex. He’s gone.”
